Friday, June 15, 2012

Friday Focus: Crinoline

Hello and welcome back to all our our awesome readers /participants of Frilly and Funkie! Linda here with a favorite product to focus on this Friday - crinoline. If you read my blog, you probably know how much I love using this fabric in my crafting. I discovered how wonderful it was about two years ago and the rest is history. I thought I would share a few things with you that can be done with crinoline. I mostly use it for flowers but have used it for rosettes and ruffles on occasion too. I'm going to take you through two flowers and the rosette and also give you to links on tutorials I have created in the past.

The first is one of my favorites - the large tea dyed shabby flower.

For this flower, I used the Tattered Florals die and cut two of each of the largest three flowers, plus I used one small flower from another sizzix die (you can see it on the left side). The shapes were cut out of crinoline and then dipped into a very strong tea solution. By strong, I mean I used about 4 cups of water and 10 tea bags then boiled it down more to concentrate it. I don't worry about wetting down the crinoline. It always stiffens back up when it dries, at least it does for me. Once I dip them into the tea solution, I lay them out flat on my craft sheet and let them air dry. Sometimes I dry them with my heat tool, but they dry stiffer and don't fray so much when left to dry on their own.

Once dry, I roll them up it a ball and squeeze them, then very carefully unfurl them.

Once unfurled, I stack them in the order in which they will be assembled. Sometimes I add a layer or two or three of tulle - whatever pleases me at the time :)

For this flower, I used a jewelry end cap and a TH long fastener to hold them together. Starting at the top layer, I treaded the long fastener through the center of the layer, adding the layers on one by one.

I started by cutting three each of the Mini Tattered Florals Movers and Shapers. I deliberately made it variegated, leaving a bit of white here and there when applying the stain. Then I dried them with my heat tool.

Next I took the one of the larger flowers and folded it together, pinched the base and added a little glue.

Then I added another layer of the same size over the first layer, again adding a dab of glue to the base and pinching it together.

Using one of the smaller sized flowers, I snipped a slit in the center and inserted the pointed base of the double layer piece I just worked on, adding another dab of glue to cement them together.

I added one more of the larger flowers as a bottom layer, gluing it on. For this flower I ended up only using four of the six pieces I cut (two of the smaller pieces were left over).

For my last sample, I created a rosette. I have to say that this idea came from Tammy Tutterow's brilliant work - it was NOT m original idea to create a rosette from crinoine.

I cut the crinoline with the larger of the two strips on the Mini Rosette die, sprayed it with Vibrant Turquoise Dylusions spray and dried it with my heat gun. I creased it accordion style, the same way I do with a paper rosette and glued a circle to the bottom in the normal manner.

There are three examples of the fun things you can do with this wonderful fabric. Also, here are some tutorials on my blog for more crinoline flowers:

BTW, we need ideas for Friday Focus products. Let us know in the comments below if there are other products you would like details on how to use or creative ideas to get more use out of your products. Don't forget, as the Friday Focus item, crinoline is on sale at 15% off from Friday through the following Thursday. So if your local sewing center doesn't carry crinoline, it's available at The Funkie Junkie Boutique.